Jean Pierre Ponnelle

In his sumptuous filming of Puccini's opera, directer Jean-Pierre Ponnelle uses an array of cinematic effects (including a memorable dream sequence) to evoke the protagonists' irreconcilably separate lives and worlds. As Butterfly, Mirella Freni is unbearably moving in one of the finest performances of her career, while Plácido Domingo makes Lt. Pinkerton a more sympathetic figure then usual.

This is a movie version of Cosi in which the performers lip synch to a pre-recorded sound track. I expected it to detract mightily from the quality of the production, but it doesn't for two reasons. First, the lip synching is just about flawless. I don't recall seeing lips moving without the words matching (although there's a slight change in the tone of the audio as the singing starts and the soundtrack switches to "pre-recorded" mode). Second, the director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle gathered a first-rate group of performers, led by the great Edita Gruberova as Fiordiligi. Gruberova's "Per pieta" is reason alone to see (and hear) this production.By Toni Bernhard

La cenerentola (“Cinderella”) is one of Rossini’s longest comedies, nearly three hours. For any readers who are not familiar with this opera, let me briefly tell you that it bears little resemblance to Perrault’s famous fairy tale. There is no fairy godmother, no pumpkin coach with mice turned into horses, no glass slipper, and no ball at the Prince’s with a midnight curfew. What’s left is a sweet girl, mistreated by her stepfather and vain stepsisters, and a prince in search of a wife…
FANFARE: David L. Kirk

Filmed live at the Vienna State Opera in December 1983, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s elegant staging of Manon captures all the pathos of Massenet’s masterpiece. Adam Fischer leads an all-star cast featuring the incomparable Edita Gruberova in the title role and the brilliant Francisco Araiza as Le chevalier des Grieux. Massenet’s Manon was immensely successful from the outset, and it has remained a hit ever since its world premiere in Paris in 1884.

While Kiri Te Kanawa was still preparing for that career-defining debut as the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro, she made her first Mozart disc under Colin Davis: a collection of sacred music, including the Solemn Vespers, KV 339, with its serene setting of ‘Laudate Dominum’, and Exsultate, jubilate. The Countess became the singer’s calling-card, and she repeated the role immediately in San Francisco and at Glyndebourne. The thwarted Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni followed, again under Davis at Covent Garden, before Kiri took her Countess to the Met in New York in February 1976, and sang her first Fiordiligi in Paris, in a production by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. The Paris Opera was also the location of Kiri’s debut as Pamina in Die Zauberflöte in 1977. Her leap into superstardom came when she sang at the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana in July 1981…